Was in a fairly senior meeting today. Those two came up as well as "flight risk" employees.
One of the senior mgrs who i respect a lot did not hold back and said something to the effect:
We've cut their year end comp last year, we've replaced those who left with internal candidates because external hiring was not allowed...and those have not picked up speed yet and now we have asked them to make it 5 days a week back into the office without compromise. I think we can all agree that Morale and these series of events are correlated.
There was no argument there and I think even this level of senior mgt (exec MDs) stopped short of saying what we truly needed to fix the issues.
It turned into we need to encourage them and their ideas so that they can show "their whole selves to work".
It's like even senior mgt 2 down from CB are afraid to speak to these issues related to comp and RTO.
BM and team have dug in their heels and worked with local politicians to bring back NYC (this was in NYC btw) by sending the sheep to the sl------r house so they can spend their days grazing at the local chain stores....